


Permission

by Scree



Category: Lizzie Bennet Diaries
Genre: F/M, Pemberley arc
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-24
Updated: 2013-01-24
Packaged: 2017-11-26 17:31:28
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 6,244
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/652713
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Scree/pseuds/Scree
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Lizzie and Darcy do lunch.</p><p>  <em>“So,” Fitz says, “speaking of mixing things up. Let’s talk about the big white elephant in the room. You guys are talking to each other, even after Darcy’s disastrous internet love confession. That’s pretty cool!”</em> </p><p>  <em>“Uh…” Lizzie says, looking around the room, her skin flushing pink.</em></p><p>  <em>“What?” Fitz asks. “We were all totally thinking it. Am I supposed to pretend it didn’t happen? Gigi and I talk about it all the time.”</em></p><p>Post episode 81.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. In which Fitz drops a bomb

Darcy realizes what he’s been doing wrong when he watches the latest video. 

Over the last week, he’s asked Lizzie if she’d like to go to lunch with him. He’s made sure to do it casually—asking her with Bing in tow, or Gigi, or even (once), with Ceres Wilkins, Pemberley’s CFO. She’s always turned him down. Nicely, yes, but without hesitation.

He doesn’t realize what he’s been doing until he sees Gigi turning to Lizzie on screen, so clearly trying to include her in the conversation, and saying, “Lizzie, where does your family ski?”

He grimaces. Even grimacing, he’s still watching Lizzie’s face—that laugh, that pinch of her lips. He knows how awkward she’s feeling, how she doesn’t want to come right out and say that at this point, her sister can’t afford Jane’s student loan payments. Ski trips are right out.

That’s when he realizes. 

Ski trips are out. So, probably, are three course lunches to the little gourmet restaurant down the street. 

Darcy’s been drawing his lunch possibilities from the forty-two restaurants in the Bay Area that have earned Michelin stars.

He is definitely going to have to step up his game. And this time, he’s going to bring out the big guns.

#

“Hey, hey, Lizzie B!” Fitz says, knocking on the side of her door. “How are you doing?”

Darcy stands just behind his friend in the hallway, and he has to admit that he’s kind of jealous of Fitz. Lizzie jumps up from her seat and gives him a big hug.

“Fitz!” she says happily. “How are you?”

“Oh, you know. I was just here with my man Darcy.” A few minutes past, Gigi primed Fitz on proper wingman behavior. Good to see that the lesson is sticking.

Lizzie glances behind Fitz. “Oh,” she says. “Hi, Darcy.”

He tries not to read anything into those three words. “Hi, Lizzie.”

“We were just headed to lunch,” Fitz says. “Want to come along?”

This is one of those moments that he’s played over and over again in his mind—the many times she’s turned down an invitation to lunch. And once that video, and Gigi’s question, gave him a nudge, he came to a realization.

“Where are you going?” she asks.

She always asked that before turning him down.

“Dim sum,” Fitz says proudly. “Darcy knows this great little hole in the wall over in Chinatown. They have the best egg custard tarts in all of San Francisco.”

Darcy holds his breath, waiting…

And this time, Lizzie smiles and reaches for her purse. “Sure,” she says.

He tries not to smile; he dislikes smiling, since he thinks it makes him look stupid. He fails. He’d guessed right. She wasn’t turning _him_ down. She was turning down his restaurants.

#

There’s an endless row of tables set up outside the shops of Chinatown, and they’re all covered with cheap imported gewgaws: Mechanical chirping crickets that make an ungodly racket, meditation balls that prompt a few half-dirty jokes between Lizzie and Fitz. Even though the banks here are national banks with branches all over the country, the names are written on the building in simplified Chinese.

They pass a storefront with a row of roasted ducks on hooks in the window before opening a door that leads up a rickety staircase.

“Really?” Lizzie says.

“Trust Darcy,” Fitz replies. “I’m telling you, he would not eat here if it were not amazing.”

Lizzie glances at Darcy and shakes her head. “I can see that.”

Darcy has to duck his head to get through the narrow doorway that leads up to the top floor. It is, as he remembers, a madhouse—the carts navigating the narrow space between the tables, people chattering in a multitude of languages, pots crashing around from the kitchen. Clouds of savory-scented steam waft out of bamboo steamers.

Really, Darcy tells himself, he has to be the densest man on the planet. 

When he asked Lizzie to lunch, he had just assumed that he would pay for her. He’d assumed that she had assumed that he would pay for her. He hadn’t even thought there would be anything awkward in that, even if they weren’t dating.

Maybe growing up with George made him feel like that—like he should expect to pay for everything with everyone. It’s something he just _does,_ and why not? He has the money. It doesn’t make any difference to him if he buys someone else’s lunch. He’d do it even if he weren’t in love with her. In fact, it almost feels weird to have someone _not_ expect him to pick up the tab.

They sit down. Shortly thereafter, a woman comes by and unceremoniously deposits a pot of tea on the table, along with cups, plates, and a card for tracking their orders.

After that, it’s a parade of carts. They get _siu mai_ and _jiaozi._ Lizzie is impressed when he asks for _cheung fun_ by name.

“There was a point a few years ago when I was in Hong Kong for three weeks,” he explains, almost embarrassed.

Dim sum, he soon remembers, can be really difficult to eat, especially if you’re not completely adept with chopsticks. He isn’t. Plus, he’s wearing a white shirt today. But the food’s too good to care about his shirt, and besides, there is always dry cleaning. Soon, he’s watching Lizzie do her best to eat shrimp dumplings. Her lips are pale pink, and there’s something deeply, painfully erotic about watching her bite into the translucent skin of the dumpling.

He has to look away, and concentrates on mixing soy sauce and chili paste on his plate instead.

“You like things hot,” Lizzie says.

Combined with his last thoughts, this has him blushing.

By way of answer, though, he lifts his own shrimp dumpling in the air, dips it into the mixture in front of him, and bites down. It’s good—really good—the tang of the sauce and the almost-sweetness of the shrimp warring with the perfectly-steamed rice dough. 

There are barbeque pork buns after that—easier to eat, since these don’t need to be wrangled with chopsticks. The dough is sweet and just a little hot, and the pork inside is tender, dyed red. 

“This,” Lizzie says, gesturing with her own pork bun, “is amazing. That hint of sugar in the meat—that’s something you just don’t get in western cooking. We don’t mix sweet and savory.”

“Or tragedy with comedy,” Darcy says. “At least, not much. The character who’s there to provide comic relief never dies tragically young.”

“Thank God,” Fitz says. “I’m safe.” He winks at Darcy as he says it, because they both remember last year when Fitz had to get that biopsy. He’d cracked jokes about cancer that shouldn’t have been funny—and wouldn’t have been funny—except that they _were._

Fitz waits until Lizzie and Darcy have both taken a bite of dessert—until Darcy’s mouth is full of sesame and the rich honey-flavor of red bean paste—before he drops his bomb.

“So,” he says, “speaking of mixing things up. Let’s talk about the big white elephant in the room. You guys are talking to each other, even after Darcy’s disastrous internet love confession. That’s pretty cool!”

The bite of sesame ball turns to a glutinous, sticky mass in Darcy’s mouth. He glares at his friend, but it feels like his jaw has been cemented together with rice paste.

“Uh…” Lizzie says, looking around the room, her skin flushing pink.

“What?” Fitz asks. “We were all totally thinking it. Am I supposed to pretend it didn’t happen? Gigi and I talk about it all the time.”

Darcy takes a swig of chrysanthemum tea and contemplates the ways that he might kill his friend with a chopstick. He can think of three. Too bad he’s not Bruce Lee.

Lizzie casts Darcy a brief, wary look, before turning back to Fitz. “I can’t speak for Darcy,” she says, “but I think we’ve both said some things we shouldn’t have. We’ll both be happier if we just forget everything that we said to each other before I came here.”

“That what you think, Darcy?” Fitz asks, with a raised eyebrow. “Just wipe the slate clean?”

Darcy is finally able to swallow the bite that has been choking him. He sets his teacup down. “No,” he says. “I disagree.”

Lizzie is looking into his eyes. God, he could drown in her eyes. Sometimes, he thinks that he _has_ drowned in them, that everything now is a dream from which he cannot wake.

“You disagree?” she repeats, her voice small.

He meets her eyes, his gaze unblinking. On this, he has promised himself, he will not waver. 

“I forget nothing.” He tries to match the airy tone Lizzie uses in her videos, to play it off as a joke, but he doesn’t do airy well. It comes out sounding fierce and unrelenting instead.

And maybe that’s okay, because when it comes to her, _fierce_ and _unrelenting_ are precisely the emotions that come to mind.


	2. Chapter 2

The last lunch must not have been too horribly awkward, because when Darcy asks Lizzie to come with him and Gigi to a Thai place not far from Pemberley, she agrees. The weather is clear, for a change, with none of the San Francisco fog so typical of this time of year. 

That just means that the wind is blowing. It’s only a few blocks over, but the cold breeze makes it feel four times longer.

It’s cold enough that the windows of the restaurant are steamed over, obscuring the view of the inside. A bell rings when they open the door, and they’re seated in the back. It’s not hard to decide what to order. Warm food: soups and fried rice and a green tofu curry.

Gigi is trying to convince Lizzie to spend the weekend with them. “It’ll be low key,” Gigi is saying, “just a few friends over for lunch, and then maybe a walking tour of downtown.”

“I don’t know,” Lizzie says, not looking at Darcy. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“No trouble!” Gigi’s voice is as bright and reassuring as she can manage. Only Darcy can hear the tension in it, the too-brightness. “William and I would love to have you over. Wouldn’t we, William?”

Darcy gives his sister an arched eyebrow. “We,” he says, “would love to have her over if she would love to come. It might not be necessary to twist her arm off at the socket, Gigi.”

Gigi blushes, but it’s Lizzie who looks away. “I get it,” she says shakily. “Okay, I get it. I’m sorry, Gigi, I won’t be able to come.”

“What did you get?” Gigi says. “What did you get that makes you think we wouldn’t want you there?” William can hear that note of frustration in his sister’s voice. It’s even more obvious when she turns to him, little furrows on her chin. 

“I don’t understand you, William,” Gigi says passionately. “I don’t understand you _at all._ You told me all about her—everything—but then when you found out she was going to Pemberley, you purposefully ran away to Los Angeles just to avoid her! I have to do _everything_ just to get the two of you in the same room, and then you don’t even take advantage of it! What do you think you are _doing?”_

Lizzie’s eyebrows lift at this outpouring.

Darcy lifts up a spoonful of soup. It’s sour—sour with kaffir lime leaves and a lemongrass broth, so sour that he can feel his saliva start to run just inhaling the steam. It’s hot, too. Flecks of red chili oil scatter on the surface, like leaves dotting the surface of a lake.

He takes a sip.

Sometimes, sour is precisely what he wants—a mouthful of sour so strong that his mouth has no choice but to dry in anticipation.

“I don’t think I’m difficult to comprehend,” he says.

Both Gigi and Lizzie are watching him, identical looks of disbelief on their face.

“That’s ridiculous,” Gigi finally says. “I can’t even figure out what you want.”

He swallows the soup. “It’s quite simple,” he says. “I want Lizzie to be happy. Whatever that takes. So no, I’m not going to twist her arm. She’s a grown woman. She can make her own decisions.”

He’s at peace with the fact that whatever it is that will make Lizzie happy is almost certainly not him. It’s a complicated, frustrating peace—more of an armistice, really—but at least he’s not at war with himself any longer.

Still, it burns all the way down—the soup, his words, the look on Lizzie’s face.

She contemplates her soup for far longer than necessary. “If it’s just the same,” she says, “this weekend I thought I would go to Hunsford. I…I need to spend some time with Charlotte.”

For some reason, when she says this, her eyes dart over to Darcy.

She smiles just a little. “But I really appreciate your asking me.”


	3. Chapter 3

After having made his confession at their last meal, Darcy definitely doesn’t expect to be doing any more lunches with Lizzie. He’s more than a little surprised, then, when after the strategy meeting a few days later, Reynolds drops into his office.

“Mr. Darcy,” he says, “while you were gone, an invitation arrived for you.”

“An invitation?”

Reynolds holds up an envelope—and indeed, it is an actual invitation, handwritten, not a transcribed phone message.

Bemused, Darcy picks it up. Bing is the only one he knows who sends actual invitations these days, and even he wouldn’t do it just for lunch. It takes Darcy a moment to realize he’s looking at Lizzie’s handwriting. He’s never seen it before. The closest he’s come to this is the text that was overlaid on some of the videos, and he’s fairly certain that Charlotte did those. Her handwriting is neat and tidy. He likes it.

Lizzie touched this. She left it for him.

_Hey Darcy,_ she’s written. _We haven’t done Indian yet. There’s a place just down the street. Lunch today?_

Darcy sucks in a breath. At her words, his whole body seems to awake from numbness. His flesh is pins and needles. It’s painful, the wash of exultation that sweeps through him. He’s light-headed with euphoria.

He has the sudden impulse to kiss Reynolds on the cheek, and he’s fairly certain that that would surprise the other man—and if Lizzie were to walk in, it would definitely give her the wrong idea. 

Instead, he casually folds the invitation and slips it back into its envelope. His administrative assistant reaches out to take it from him, and Darcy has to squelch the urge to hide his precious invitation behind his back, to bat the other man’s hand away. 

Lizzie touched this, after all.

He doesn’t let the other man have it.

“I have a phone call in five minutes,” Darcy says. “Ask Lizzie if twelve thirty will do—and let her know that I might be a few minutes late, depending on how the call goes.”

#

When Darcy comes out of his office—at precisely twelve twenty-nine—Lizzie is waiting for him. Lizzie and…nobody else.

“Hi, Lizzie,” he says, unable to take his eyes off her. He doesn’t want to make any assumptions. He used up all his assumptions months ago, and he has little enough credit on her account. “Are we…Who else are we waiting for?”

“Nobody,” she says, folding her arms. She’s wearing a black jacket over jeans, with the hint of a blue top poking out. “It’s just the two of us.”

He loves her in blue. It does the most amazing things to her eyes. Right now, it makes them sea-green—the color of the ocean at its warmest in summer. He swallows at the thought of having that wide horizon of ocean to himself.

“Well, then. Shall we go?” 

He thinks about offering her his arm, thinks better of it, then thinks better of his thinking better of it. By the time he’s thoroughly tangled himself in a confusing argument about whether it’s too old-fashioned, too forward, or just plain unwanted, she’s stood up and hooked her purse around her elbow.

“Sure,” she says, and he trails after her.

They exchange basic pleasantries on the walk there. She asks about Darcy’s day thus far; he wants to know what she thought of the strategy session two days past. 

“I’m sorry if you expected someone else to be here,” she says, when they’ve been seated across the street, a mango lassi in front of each of them. “But I thought that maybe we needed to do this without having other people here as security blankets.”

“Is that what Fitz and Gigi were?” he asks, amused in spite of himself.

“For me. Not you.” She plays with the straw that came with her lassi, bending it back and forth. Then she glances up at him. “Maybe I should apologize. Bringing that up…not the best conversation opener.”

“No need to apologize. We’ve already had the most awkward conversation ever,” he replies. “We have nowhere to go but up.”

There’s a hint of satisfaction to the set of her lips, an expression so faint that he can’t even call it the ghost of a smile. Maybe it’s more like the soul of one.

He raises his lassi glass to her. “Cheers,” he says. “To having already hit the absolute bottom.”

They order when the waiter comes again—naan and chicken vindaloo.

“I think one of the reasons I feel so uncomfortable,” Lizzie says, as they’re waiting for the food to come, “is that I just can’t figure out why you’re not mad at me. I mean, not to rehash the videos or anything, but I said some awful things about you. How can you not hate me?”

The concept is totally foreign to him. Asking the question is like asking why fire doesn’t freeze. Hating Lizzie is a thermodynamic impossibility, a violation of the laws of physics.

But he does understand where she’s coming from.

Darcy shrugs. “That night when I watched your videos—I was angry then. I went for a bike ride to try and burn off my frustration. Then I came home and wrote a very angry letter.” He glances over at her. “I think I was trying to vindicate myself.”

“I didn’t think your letter was angry.” Lizzie shrugs. “Definitely not. So… You just…got over it?” She sounds dubious.

“I started thinking about how I would feel if the first thing I ever heard you say was that you didn’t see the point in offering me basic civility because my looks were just ‘okay.’”

The waiter comes and leaves dishes of rice and chicken in a red sauce on the table. They take turns serving themselves.

“It wouldn’t matter if you were talking about me or someone else,” he says. “It was an asinine thing to say. I can’t blame you for concluding that I was an ass.”

Darcy takes a piece of naan. The flat bread is hot, and the top has been brushed with a fine layer of _ghee_. The butter sticks to his fingers. He reaches for a napkin to wipe it away, and then pauses.

Lizzie’s taken her naan, too. She takes a bite, contemplates her fingers, and then licks them.

The sight of her tongue on her fingers brings to mind other images—her tongue, his fingers; her tongue, his cock. Sometimes, it’s really, _really_ hard to remember that he wants her to be happy. Sometimes, he just wants her. He balls his fist and drives it into his hip, grinding his knuckles into his muscle to distract himself.

She doesn’t say anything. She doesn’t seem to notice that anything is odd at all. She just rips off another piece of the bread and uses it to scoop up vindaloo.

“This is good,” she says.

It’s really good, and he hasn’t even taken a bite.

“You know,” Lizzie says, after she’s swallowed her mouthful, “you’re being a lot more reasonable about this than I had imagined. It never occurred to me that you’d look at things from my point of view.”

He doesn’t have an answer for that—of _course_ he’ll think about things from her point of view; he loves her—so he shrugs and eats instead.

But she isn’t finished. “The truth is,” she said, “I was pretty impressed with my own cleverness. It was a lot of fun hating on you. That Darcybot routine—it was good stuff. Hilarious. I remember snickering madly when I uploaded that episode. All I had to do to find it funny was pretend that you weren’t human. That you didn’t have feelings to hurt.”

He looks over at her and raises an eyebrow.

“All I’m saying is that if I had a time machine…”

“If you lay your hands on one,” Darcy says, “let me borrow it first. Punching myself in the face at the Gibson wedding would have prevented all of this.”

“Can’t I just leave a Post-It on my mirror?” Lizzie asks almost plaintively. “Something like—‘William Darcy is not a robot.’” She tilts her head. “No, that won’t work. Past-Lizzie will probably blame Jane for leaving it. Jane and Charlotte both told me often enough that you…that you…”

He’s curious how she’s going to finish the sentence.

“That you liked me,” she says.

The word is _love_ , not like; the tense is present, not past. He chooses his next words carefully.

“I’ve changed my mind. You keep the time machine,” Darcy says. “For me… I learned a valuable lesson. When the woman you love tells you that she wants nothing to do with you because you’re selfish, arrogant, and proud—it functions as something of a wake up call.” He looks down, concentrates on his vindaloo for a moment.

She sets her fork on the table. “Darcy,” she says, somewhat foolishly. “You don’t—that is, you can’t—” 

He does. He can. He doesn’t know how to explain to her how easy it is to love her. 

She fumbles for words. “I mean,” she finally settles on, “it would be absurd for you to care for me still. I’m…” She lets out a little laugh. “I’m decent enough, but—”

He looks up at that, furious at Past-Darcy all over again. “Yes,” he says, “I said that once. I don’t know how I could have been so blind. It has been many months since I’ve counted you as the most beautiful woman that I have ever met.”

That shuts her up.

“But you’re not where I am,” he says. “It’s likely that you never will be. I don’t mind. This isn’t about my feelings. If I’m making you unhappy or uncomfortable—if you’d rather not spend time with me because of our past—you should feel no obligation.”

She lets out a breath, looks around the restaurant. There aren’t that many people in it, for all that it’s lunch time; the nearest table is several yards away.

“Wow,” she says. “You don’t mince words.” She keeps looking at him, then looking away, then looking back. “Okay,” she finally says, more to herself than to him, “all cards face up.” 

She sets her hands flat on the glass top of the table as if to steady herself.

“I think you’re hot,” she says. “Really hot, and it’s blowing my mind. But you’re right. I’m not there yet. I don’t want to lead you on. But I also don’t want to walk away until I know where I am.”

It’s more than he hoped for. In fact, he’s going to be thinking about her words—her looking in his eyes and saying that she thinks he’s _hot_ —for nights and nights on end. Blowing her mind? She’s just blown his.

No. Bad choice of words. He can’t think about _blowing._

“There are times,” she says, “when I’m sitting next to you and I think about jumping your bones. What stops me is the morning after. I don’t know what happens then.”

This is not something Darcy has ever contemplated. When he lets himself fantasize about Lizzie, he thinks about mornings _of_ and mornings _during_ and mornings _between_. In his mind, there have never been mornings after.

But that, he suspects, is what she’s saying. He knows what it will have to be, what he wants from her. She won’t come to him until—unless—their visions match.

“Understood,” he says with a faint nod of his head. “And Lizzie… You’re not leading me on.”

The check comes in a few minutes. Darcy takes it, sets a few bills in the tray—enough for everything.

Lizzie reaches across the table, examines the check… She carefully opens her purse, counts out enough to cover her share, and sets it in the plastic tray. She looks up at him defiantly, and he understands what it means.

He’s not paying for her. They’re not dating. He could bully her with facts: In the time it took them to consume this meal, he’s made more money in interest than she probably sees in a month. If he hadn’t eaten with her, he probably would have spent more money on a meal for just himself. 

The money is nothing to him.

But Lizzie is everything, and she doesn’t want this.

He takes his money back.


	4. Chapter 4

The next time they meet, it’s over sushi.

They order dragon rolls and spicy tuna, and Darcy insists on some plain salmon nigiri because he loves plain salmon.

If someone had asked him before, he might have said that the truth they’ve told each other should make them uneasy in each other’s company. It’s quite the opposite, though; they neither of them have anything to hide.

For the first time in…a long time, Lizzie teases him. She teases him about the amount of wasabi he mixes into his soy sauce.

“Really, Darcy?” she says. “That’s it? And here I thought you would try to impress me with your macho wasabi eating prowess.”

It reminds him of being at Netherfield—Lizzie teasing him, him trying not to respond. “There is,” he tells her gravely, “no known correlation between the usual measures of manliness and the eating of wasabi.”

“It’s good for your teeth,” Lizzie says, and he doesn’t believe her until she forces him to google it on his iPhone.

“I would concede the point,” he replies after having stared at the studies in bemusement. “But this isn’t really wasabi. It’s horse radish dyed green.” She doesn’t believe him until he googles it for her.

By the time they’ve made their way through the spicy tuna rolls, she’s challenged him to wasabi bombs—basically, eating little balls of straight wasabi.

Darcy does it without flinching. “Actually,” he tells her, “it’s less painful eating it straight. When you mix it with soy sauce and dip it in rice, there’s more surface area for the wasabi to interact with your tongue.”

“That is such bullshit,” she says passionately, but then he makes her try it both ways, one right after the other, and she agrees.

It might very well be the perfect afternoon with her. It’s not some time stripped out of a low-lit fantasy. It’s the Lizzie he fell in love with, charming and sweet and passionate about life, only this time, she’s not trying to insult him. She’s having as much fun as he is.

He doesn’t want their time together to end. But while they’re dawdling over the check, Lizzie’s phone beeps. She picks it up, casually; her face falls. She glances over at Darcy once and then starts reading.

He can almost see her turning white. Her hands start to shake.

“Lizzie?” he asks. “Is everything…” No. He can see already that everything is not all right. “Is there anything I can do?”

She hands him the phone. Jane has forwarded him a list of demands, all sent by Wickham. Standard issue extortion—so standard, that Darcy has seen it before. Literally. He swallows, hard.

Her phone dings again. It’s another message from Jane. She reads it, and then hands it to Darcy once again.

_As much as I feared breaking the news to Lydia,_ Jane has written, _I can’t help but wish that she was around to hear it. Her room is a mess. There’s a note on the table. Lizzie, I think Lydia has run away—and it looks like she has no intention of coming back._

Lizzie is trying not to cry. He can see it in her features. As soon as she has her phone back, she pulls up Expedia. He can’t help but see over her shoulder—there are no flights out tonight, not with seats left. None tomorrow, unless she doesn’t mind being routed through St. Louis.

“Maybe I should just take the train,” she says. 

“Let’s get you back to the office,” Darcy tells her. “Maybe with a full keyboard and internet access you can find something better.”

In fact, Darcy already has a better idea.

#

There’s a knock on his office door a few hours later. He looks up to see Lizzie standing in the doorway. She has a hand on her hip.

“Darcy,” she says, her voice shaking.

“Yes?”

“I can’t accept this.” She holds up her phone, pointing to what must be the reservation request that she’s been sent. “It’s too much.”

Darcy frowns at her and wonders what he should say. After all—

“Don’t pretend,” she says. “I freak out about not being able to find any flights, and forty-five minutes later, Jane e-mails me that my uncle has been able to use frequent flyer miles to get me down tomorrow morning? In first class? Darcy, did you really _think_ I would fall for that?”

Darcy swallows. “I didn’t actually want you to know that I was responsible.”

Lizzie tilts her head. “Didn’t think I would want to _know?”_

“I had rather hoped that you would…be so relieved to have that burden lifted from your shoulders that, under the circumstances, you wouldn’t question too much.” He shrugs.

Lizzie rolls her eyes. “Darcy, I won’t let you pay nine dollars and sixty-two cents for my lunch. You can’t imagine that I’m just going to accept a first class ticket—”

“Technically,” he says, “it didn’t cost me anything. I _did_ use frequent flyer miles—”

“It’s the principle of the thing,” she says. “I’ll have to pay you back. Somehow.” She sets her jaw.

Darcy doesn’t know what to say to that at first. It’s nothing to him—almost literally nothing. He won’t even notice it.

He finally looks up at her. “Did it make you feel any better?” he asks her.

“Yes, but—”

“Then you’ve paid me back.” He says. “Because there isn’t anything I could buy that would bring me more joy.”

She doesn’t seem to understand that, not at first. She opens her mouth to protest, then closes it, then opens it again. Finally, she raises her head and looks at him. “You really mean that.”

He nods.

“Then next time,” she says, “ask me first. Because that would make me feel best of all.”

It’s a really fair request.

“In that case,” he replies, “may I offer you a ride to the airport tomorrow morning?”

“I don’t want to put you to any trouble. My flight’s at 6 AM. I can take BART.” She grimaces, perhaps remembering that BART doesn’t run that early. “Or a shuttle…”

She stops, looks over at him. He doesn’t say anything, but she looks in his eyes and then nods slowly, as if finally understanding that he will, in fact, consider himself better off waking up at three. Making sure that she gets to the airport on time, with no hassle. That it’s worth it to him if it makes her life better by even the tiniest iota. 

“Fine,” she says. “I mean…I’d love the company. Thank you.”

He nods to her. “I’d love to take you. And since I’m supposed to ask… I have, as you know, some experience dealing with Wickham on these matters. Do I have your permission to pursue a few avenues of inquiry?”

He holds his breath.

“Sure,” she says. But there’s no hope in her voice.

#

They don’t talk much in the car. He made coffee for her; she holds the travel cup as he drives, sipping it slowly.

Truthfully, there isn’t much to say. He’s already said everything. And… 

He pulls up in the departure zone. She doesn’t look at him as she gets out of the car. She’s already searching through the myriad airline signs for the right direction. In her mind, Darcy suspects, Lizzie is already on the plane, flying away from him, flying back to her home and the family that needs her. 

There’s no reason for her to come back to San Francisco. There’s no reason for _them,_ and he had just begun to harbor that sliver of hope. _This isn’t about you,_ he reminds himself. 

And it isn’t.

There are more important things than his own foolish imaginings of a rosier future. Like her sister. Her family. The fact that what has happened is at least, in part, his fault, and he has to make it right. 

He takes her luggage out of the trunk, pulls out the handles, makes sure that the smaller bag is clipped properly to her suitcase, so that she can bring it inside the terminal on her own. The morning is gray and cold; he can hear a traffic officer blowing a whistle, somewhere, but he concentrates on this one little thing.

When he looks up from that task, Lizzie is standing beside him. Looking at him. Just looking at him, with an unreadable expression on her face. 

He has always known he would say goodbye to Lizzie. He just didn’t know it would be like this—surrounded by the early morning bustle of the airport, by gray fog and grayer concrete, by headlights coming out of the mist.

“You have everything?” he asks.

“No.” She shakes her head, not looking away from him. “There’s one thing I don’t have yet.”

“What is it? I can—”

She sets her hands on his shoulders, stretches up—

Darcy’s heart starts beating, hard, but he steps away. “No,” he says, a little more forcefully than he ought, because what he really wants to say is _yes._ “Don’t. I don’t want that kind of thanks from you.”

She raises an eyebrow at him. “That wasn’t a thank you, Darcy.”

His mind stutters to a halt because he can’t fit a kiss from Lizzie anywhere else in his mind. “Oh?”

“These next weeks are going to be awful,” Lizzie says. “And in the midst of all that awfulness, I just wanted to…to remember.”

“Remember what?” His words sound thick.

“That there is something real in this world. Something good. That there are people who care about me.” She’s trailing off, sounding smaller and smaller, but she hasn’t looked away from him. “That…” She takes a deep breath. “That you’re…you’re one of them.” Her voice rises on the last word, making that final statement almost a question.

He can’t leave her questioning that. 

Instead, he takes her hands in his. Her fingers are so cold, and he doesn’t have time to warm them up. He pulls her close. And this time, when she tilts her head back—when she stretches up to him, he bends his neck to her.

He had always imagined that when he kissed Lizzie, it would be something electric—electric and erotic. That the sensation of her lips on his would shove him into sensory overload, that he wouldn’t hear or see anything else.

He was wrong. He’s aware of everything—of the honking of horns behind him, of the clammy cold of the morning, seeping through his jacket. Of her hands in his, her body, so close to his. He’s aware of the kiss, breaking through him like a sunrise even though it’s not yet five in the morning. And he’s aware that this is an illusion—that this is not the morning of a dawning relationship, no matter how it feels, no matter that she gives a little gasp and steps into him.

He’s aware that this is farewell.

She pulls away from him, turns, then stops, and turns back. She touches her hand to his cheek, almost tenderly.

And then she draws in breath, as if for strength and courage, takes her luggage, and disappears into the terminal.

Darcy watches her go. It won’t be the last time he sees her—there’s always the videos, after all—but he knows in his heart of hearts that this is the last time she’ll see him.

He waits until he can’t see her anymore, until the bright flame of her hair is swallowed up by the airport, before he gets back in his car. He starts the engine, pulls out into the far lane.

He doesn’t get back on the freeway, though. Instead, he follows the signs for the airport return, and this time around, he parks his car.

Everything he needs is in the black bag on the back seat, and he’s not coming back. Not until he’s set everything right.


End file.
